Question Which VPN do you guys use, and how well do you like it?

[myocardia]

So, I'd like to start using a VPN, but have no idea which one of the seemingly hundreds available I should use. I'm not that worried about cost, within reason, of course. I will need to be able to use more than one device at a time, though. A minimum of three, if including my phone, and preferably four. Which one(s) do you guys and/or girls recommend? Any I should just flat-out avoid?

edit: It seems I made a big mistake by not reading all of NordVPNs terms of service, specifically that they sell 107 different companies any and all data that they have about either you or your use of their services, i.e. which websites you visit, for how long, etc. Oh, and they hold themselves 100% not responsible for what these companies do with the data, which is 100% not okay with me. Link here: https://my.nordaccount.com/legal/te...gn&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ToS-Update_N

Does Private Internet Access do something similar? I'm still well within the period in which I can get a refund from Nord. I have no qualms paying more to a company who isn't selling data pertaining to me to anyone with a checkbook.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I can say VPN.ac has been good from a support standpoint. Over the years I helped them figure out they had a bad card in a router a couple of times, but it wasn't their router but the intermediate company at the local annex. Very responsive and going back in forth with troubleshooting, but that impression may be skewed since I work in wide area networking

 

[ch33zw1z]

How does the device limit work, if you put your VPN info into a router, specifically for VPN usage, preferably running 3rd-party (VPN-enabled) firmware? Since you can then connect any PC (or any number of PCs, really, more-or-less) to that router, and it will route / NAT over that VPN connection?

I actually recommend doing that, though I have no personal experienced doing so. That way, if you want to use a VPN, just plug your PC in, or switch Wifi SSIDs to the VPN router, and otherwise, connect to your "normal" router.

IMXP, PIA only sees this as one connection. I ran pfsense in a VM and hung an old router (as a WAP, with 3 ports left for switch) off it for about a year. Pfsense had an always on tunnel to PIA and all the traffic went thru it. It was fun, and little annoying to change servers and reverify the connection. I stopped doing it shortly after netflix started blocking it as a proxy connection

 

[ch33zw1z]

OP: I still use PIA, it works fine, only occasionally have a saturated server but switching to a different one seems to clear it up

 

[WelshBloke]

edit: It seems I made a big mistake by not reading all of NordVPNs terms of service, specifically that they sell 107 different companies any and all data that they have about either you or your use of their services, i.e. which websites you visit, for how long, etc. Oh, and they hold themselves 100% not responsible for what these companies do with the data, which is 100% not okay with me. Link here: https://my.nordaccount.com/legal/te...gn&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ToS-Update_N

So is this true or not? If not OP needs to edit their post again.
If its not true and its not changed then the post probably needs reporting.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I have not seen anything to that effect about them selling data since this post. I don't think that is true since I believe this would have been in the news.

So is this true or not? If not OP needs to edit their post again.
If its not true and its not changed then the post probably needs reporting.

 

[mindless1]

My PIA sub. ran out recently, decided to go with them again. They currently have 3yrs + 2 mos for $79 ($2.08/mo.) deal, used to need a special link to get that but currently it's on their homepage... it isn't always, until recently the link was as below (with an affiliate code at the end but it works without the affiliate code too so I stripped that off):

Private Internet Access | Anonymous VPN Service Provider

www.privateinternetaccess.com

 

[Ken g6]

VPN news:

How Private Is My VPN? – The Markup

VPNs promise privacy, but The Markup found their apps and websites full of trackers

themarkup.org

Most of it relates just to the websites of the VPN providers, but I'm not sure about the privacy policy. Anybody use any of the three without tracking in their privacy policy? I've never heard of any of those.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Well this is certainly disturbing. Thank you for posting this! I Wonder if there is any way to block the trackers?

Unfortunately I don't really know anything about the providers that are not doing the tracking so I am not sure how could they would be if I were to use one of them....

 

[mindless1]

IMO, trying to block your VPN's website trackers isn't much more significant than trying to block every other tracker on the internet.

How often do you use your VPN's site? I used it to sign up, at which point there was no account associated yet (or one soon to end as mentioned below), and even then was on their VPN if it was a subscription renewal or switch to a new account, then to unsubscribe from auto-renewal right before I switched accounts.

Your normal policies and methods for blocking trackers anywhere should apply, to whatever extent it concerned you already.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

That makes sense, thank you! It probably isn't a huge issue in the end.

 

[Steltek]

I previously had PIA, but switched to NordVPN a few weeks ago. I was with PIA for about 18 months and never had a problem with them (that I knew about, anyway), but the sketchy business history of the current ownership together with the fact that they've never undergone a public privacy audit has always made me somewhat leery of them.

NordVPN has been okay so far, so I haven't any complaints yet.

The one thing I do miss from PIA is having a native Linux GUI app - PIA has one, while the owners of NordVPN simply can't be bothered to create one. While it isn't that hard to control NordVPN via terminal, it is really annoying to have to do so. You'd think NordVPN's ownership would realize it is the 2020's now and not the 1990's.....